ABSTRACT Agents in Frankfurt-style counterexamples only appear to be responsible insofar as they act willingly in the actual sequence, but would need to be manipulated against their will into forming the relevant intention in the alternative sequence. This difference appears ineliminable and unavoidably morally significant. ‘Neo-Frankfurtians’ concede that the sequences must be physically differentiated, but deny their moral differentiation. In contrast, I explore whether the alternatives could be physically undifferentiated, despite their moral difference. The reason there is an ineliminable moral (...) difference is because there is an ineliminable causal one: The agent’s choice must be caused by his own inclinations in one sequence, but by Black’s manipulation in the other. Whether this causal difference entails a physical one depends on whether we suppose causal relations conform to Humean supervenience. The denial of the latter requires us to either reject any broadly Humean view of causation, or else to suppose that we can individuate events or their qualities independently of the physical facts. If these are coherent possibilities, such examples may show that physically differentiated alternatives are not required for moral responsibility. This could support compatibilism, but only if such examples adequately parallel determinism, and I remain sceptical on this point. (shrink)

Einleitung -- al-Fārābī -- Nizām al-Mulik -- Ibn Taymiyya -- Ibn Khaldūn -- Afghānī, ʻAbduh, Riḍā und ʻAbd al-Rāziq -- Muḥammad Iqbāl -- Esad Bey -- Ḥasan al-Bannā -- Sayyid Quṭb -- Muḥammad Asad -- Khomeini -- Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zaid -- Elijah Muḥammad -- Qaraḍāwī.

Abstract‘Relativists' and ‘absolutists' about truth often see their own camp as promoting virtues, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility, and see the opposing camp as fostering vices, like closed-mindedness and arrogance. Relativism is accused of fostering these vices because it entails that each person’s beliefs are automatically right for the person who holds them. How can we be humble or open-minded if we cannot concede that we might be wrong? Absolutism is accused of fostering these vices because the view is (...) seen as entailing certainty. This also seems to preclude us from conceding that we could be wrong. However, no relativist defends the Protagorean version of relativism that entails infallibilism. And no absolutist posits infallible certainty. Fallibilism really is a precondition of various virtues, but both camps take themselves to be defending fallibilist positions against opponents who they take to be committed to infallibilism. Philosophers may inadvertently end up promoting precisely the sort of infallibilism they oppose by creating a false dichotomy and caricaturing the opposing camp. This underscores the importance of interpretive charity in both academic and public debate. (shrink)

Supervenient libertarianism maintains that indeterminism may exist at a supervening agency level, consistent with determinism at a subvening physical level. It seems as if this approach has the potential to break the longstanding deadlock in the free will debate, since it concedes to the traditional incompatibilist that agents can only do otherwise if they can do so in their actual circumstances, holding the past and the laws constant, while nonetheless arguing that this ability is compatible with physical determinism. However, we (...) argue that supervenient libertarianism faces some serious problems, and that it fails to break us free from this deadlock within the free will debate. (shrink)

Proponents of modern Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples generally accept that we cannot construct successful FSCs in which there are no alternative possibilities present. But they maintain that we can construct successful FSCs in which there are no morally significant alternatives present and that such examples succeed in breaking any conceptual link between alternative possibilities and free will. I argue that it is not possible to construct an FSC that succeeds even in this weaker sense. In cases where any alternatives are clearly insignificant, (...) it does not appear at all obvious that the agent can be held responsible. Present popular FSCs include alternatives that are ambiguous in their significance, and when the examples are sharpened to remove this ambiguity, they lose their force. Moreover, the proponent of such examples faces a problem: We can easily construct scenarios in which any alternatives are obviously insignificant, and in such scenarios, we are not intuitively inclined to suppose the agent is responsible. The proponent of new FSCs must therefore distinguish any alternatives she includes from the sorts included in these scenarios. The difference must now be such that this helps to make it seem intuitively likely that the agent is responsible where the agent otherwise would not appear responsible, and these alternatives are irrelevant to any judgment about whether the agent is responsible. I maintain that it is impossible to achieve both of these goals at once. (shrink)

Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on (...) the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice. (shrink)

Pereboom has formulated a Frankfurt-style counterexample in which an agent is alleged to be responsible despite the fact that there are only non-robust alternatives present (Pereboom, Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, 2003; Phil Explor 12(2):109–118, 2009). I support Widerker’s objection to Pereboom’s Tax Evasion 2 example (Widerker, J Phil 103(4):163–187, 2006) (which rests on the worry that the agent in this example is derivatively culpable as opposed to directly responsible) against Pereboom’s recent counterarguments (...) to this objection (Pereboom 2009). Building on work by Moya (J Phil 104:475–486, 2007; Critica 43(128):3–26, 2011) and Widerker (Widerker 2006), I argue that there is good reason to measure the robustness of alternatives in terms of comparative, rather than non-comparative likelihood of exemption, where the important factor for blame is whether the agent is “doing her reasonable best” to avoid blameworthy behaviour. I maintain that an agent only ever appears responsible when alternatives are robust in this sense. In Pereboom’s examples, both Tax Evasion 2, and his more recent version, Tax Evasion 3 (Pereboom 2009), I maintain the robustness of the alternatives, so understood, is unclear. We can clear up any ambiguity by sharpening the examples, and the result is that the agent appears responsible when the alternatives are made clearly robust, and does not appear responsible when alternatives appear clearly non-robust. The comparative nature of our judgements about blame, I maintain helps to explain the continuing appeal of the “leeway-incompatibilist” viewpoint. (shrink)

A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...) justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them. (shrink)

While philosophers have worried about mental causation for centuries, worries about the causal relevance of conscious phenomena are also increasingly featuring in neuroscientific literature. Neuroscientists have regarded the threat of epiphenomenalism as interesting primarily because they have supposed that it entails free will scepticism. However, the steps that get us from a premise about the causal irrelevance of conscious phenomena to a conclusion about free will are not entirely clear. In fact, if we examine popular philosophical accounts of free will, (...) we find, for the most part, nothing to suggest that free will is inconsistent with the presence of unconscious neural precursors to choices. It is only if we adopt highly non-naturalistic assumptions about the mind (e.g. if we embrace Cartesian dualism and locate free choice in the non-physical realm) that it seems plausible to suppose that the neuroscientific data generates a threat to free will. (shrink)

Neither laziness nor its condemnation are new inventions, however, perceiving laziness as a social condition that afflicts a 'nation' is. In the early modern era, Ottoman political treatises did not regard the people as the source of the state's problems. Yet in the nineteenth century, as the imperial ideology of Ottomanism and modern discourses of citizenship spread, so did the understanding of laziness as a social disease that the 'Ottoman nation' needed to eradicate. Asking what we can learn about Ottoman (...) history over the long nineteenth-century by looking closely into the contested and shifting boundaries of the laziness - productivity binary, Melis Hafez explores how 'laziness' can be used to understand emerging civic culture and its exclusionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. A polyphonic involvement of moralists, intellectuals, polemicists, novelists, bureaucrats, and, to an extent, the public reveals the complexities and ambiguities of this multifaceted cultural transformation. Using a wide variety of sources, this book explores the sustained anxiety about productivity that generated numerous reforms as well as new understandings of morality, subjectivity, citizenship, and nationhood among the Ottomans. (shrink)

I examine Manuel Vargas's revisionist justification for continuing with our responsibility-characteristic practices in the absence of basic desert. I query his claim that this justification need not depend on how we settle questions about the content of morality, arguing that it requires us to reject the Kantian principle that prohibits treating anyone merely as a means. I maintain that any convincing argument against this principle would have to be driven by concerns that arise within the sphere of moral theory itself, (...) whereas Vargas's argument draws solely on concerns about the expensive metaphysics involved in a libertarian conception of freedom. I argue that this amounts not just to changing the concept of free will by stipulation, but also (more problematically) to changing our moral principles by stipulation. (shrink)

The events that followed the revolution of 25 January 2011 demonstrated the tenacity and resilience of gendered dissent and its centrality to collective action and civil disobedience, thus enriching the transnational feminist archive with the experiences and praxis of gendered revolutionary action. Paying particular attention to women’s activism during the uprisings in Egypt, this article focuses on the broader themes of gendered political resistance and the intersections of gender ideology, state policing, Islamism and militarism with protest and collective action. The (...) aim is to take count of the challenges and gains of gendered resistance and women’s political participation during times of political upheaval. (shrink)

Theoretical concepts that explain transnational mass or social communication are rather unsophisticated. After twenty years of research on media ‘globalization’, academic thinking in this field is still vague and definitely requires more effort. One reason as to why theory is so unconvincing is that most researchers are experts for the ‘translocal’ but not for the ‘local’. Our language skills and methodologies are particularly limited when we try to understand if and how transnational media do or do not affect non-Western societies. (...) To get out of this methodology trap we need a better integration of media studies and the so-called area studies. Currently, media and communication studies, despite all efforts, are ‘international’ only in a very limited sense. There is a dire need for better integration of Asian, African, Latin American, North African and Middle Eastern media studies into theoretical debates. (shrink)

Through an ethnographic account of a social reform project led by Islamic activist women in the village of Mehmeit in rural Egypt, this article analyses women's Islamic activism as a form of worship. Women's experiences of activism are at the centre of this account, which highlights their attempts to economically and socially develop a destitute rural community. Their development ideals mirror the embedded principles of liberal secular modernity and offer a tangible example of the concomitance of these so-called binaries of (...) religion and secularism in women's religious activism. Normative assumptions regarding religion and secularism as two binary constructs have largely dictated a monolithic view of women who engage in Islamic activism as religious subjects primarily devoted to a spiritual, internal faith. Persistent models of religious selves engaged in a continuous exercise of self-fashioning towards a fixed ‘religious ideal’ overlook the complexity and seamlessness of the desires that animate these subjectivities. Moreover, it is inaccurate to represent participants in Islamic activism as homogenized into one overarching group that adheres to standardized religious membership criteria. Discourses of modernity have also constructed separate spheres of what is defined as religion and secularism. Yet, these spheres, in practice, are not always so neatly demarcated as they are in modern principles. Societies shaped by the historical and temporal dynamics of colonialism, modernization, secularization and nation building projects present more complex and heterogeneous forms of subjectivities in their members. This article illustrates how a theoretical concomitance of religion and secularism opens up new possible considerations of women's activism in Islamic movements. The author argues that the desires and subjectivities of Islamic women that inform their activism are ultimately linked to the historical emergence of secularism and state modernization schemes aimed at transforming Muslim subjects into modern citizens of liberal democracies. (shrink)

A “contrastive explanation” explains not only why some event A occurred, but why A occurred as opposed to some alternative event B. Some philosophers argue that agents could only be morally responsible for their choices if those choices have contrastive explanations, since they would otherwise be “luck infested”. Assuming that contrastive explanations cannot be offered for causally undetermined events, this requirement entails that no one could be held responsible for a causally undetermined choice. Such arguments challenge incompatibilism, since they entail (...) that causal determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. However, I argue that for a significant class of choices, even if we stipulate that they are determined, we will be unable to provide a relevant contrastive explanation. Hence causal determinism is no remedy for luck infestation, and compatibilists do not fare much better than incompatibilists in the face of this requirement. This should serve to weaken its philosophical appeal. (shrink)

Haji argues that determinism threatens deontic morality, not via a threat to moral responsibility, but directly, because of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Haji’s argument requires not only that we embrace an ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle, but also that we adopt the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’. I argue that we have little reason to adopt the latter principle, and examine whether deontic morality might be destroyed on the basis of the more commonly embraced ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (...) principle alone. I argue that despite what look like initially compelling reasons why we might suppose that this weaker conclusion is similarly destructive to deontic morality, we actually have good reason to doubt that it has any practical relevance for moral deliberation at all. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold. First is to demonstrate that most values that underpin public health policy are a source of reasonable disagreement amongst citizens to whom said policy applies....

Is it morally justifiable to force non-consenting pregnant women to submit to caesarean surgery to save their fetus in distress? Even though proponents and opponents largely agree on the interests at stake, such as the health and life of the fetus and the respect for bodily integrity and autonomy of pregnant women, they disagree on which moral weight to attach to these interests. This is why disagreements about the justifiability of forced caesareans tend to be pervasive and intractable. To sidestep (...) this deadlock, we will focus on conditions that give rise to the ‘caesarean dilemma’ in the first place, namely the conflict between inherent norms and values medical professionals are committed to by virtue of being a medical professional. Using the reflective equilibrium, we will test the opponents’ and proponents’ considered judgments about forced caesareans against the norms and values they—as medical professionals—are committed to and determine whether they are coherent. Subsequently we will identify the proponents’ incoherencies between the considered judgments and norms and values they are committed to and conclude that as long as these incoherencies are in place, forced caesareans are morally impermissible. (shrink)

If indeterminism is to be necessary for moral responsibility, we must show that it doesn’t preclude responsibility (the Luck Problem) and that it might enhance it (the Enhancement Problem). A ‘strong luck claim’ motivates the Luck Problem: if an agent’s choice is undetermined, then her mental life will be causally irrelevant to her choice, whichever way she decides. A ‘weak luck claim’ motivates the Enhancement Problem: if an agent’s choice is undetermined, then even if her mental life is causally relevant (...) to her choice, whichever way she decides, we cannot explain how she _settles_ her choice. Only the weak luck claim is plausible. However, its plausibility depends on our accepting that we could only settle our choices if they are settled by additional exercises of agency. If we instead understand the process of settling decisions in procedural terms, we can begin to sketch a solution to the Enhancement Problem. (shrink)

Measures aimed at general deterrence are often thought to be problematic on the basis that they violate the Kantian prohibition against sacrificing the interests of some as a means of securing a greater good. But even if this looks like a weak objection because deterrence can be justified as a form of societal self-defence, such measures may be regarded as problematic for another reason: Harming in self-defence is only justified when it’s necessary, i.e., when there are no relatively harmless alternatives. (...) While there are few harmless ways to remove the threat posed by dangerous individuals, there are many relatively harmless methods for preventing crime. We can bracket off our preventative failings when we think of present threats, but we cannot do so when contemplating alternative preventative measures. (shrink)

Incompatibilism is often accused of incoherence because it introduces randomness in support of freedom. I argue that the sort of randomness that's thought to be detrimental to freedom results not from denying causal determinism, so much as denying what we might call ‘rational determinism’: denying that agents' actions are determined by their reasons for acting. Compatibilists argue that introducing the ability to decide differently allows agents to make choices that are irrational, and this undermines rather than furthering freedom. I maintain (...) that this argument neglects scenarios in which reasons are in conflict with one another. In such scenarios, we can preserve rationality without claiming that the agent's choices are rationally determined. (shrink)

This thesis is an investigation into free will, and the role of alternative possibilities. I defend an incompatibilist notion of freedom, but argue that such freedom is not exercised in all cases of decision-making. I begin by considering the debate surrounding Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument that alternative possibilities are irrelevant to freedom. I argue that the main disagreement can be best understood by considering the dispute surrounding the 'Flicker-of-Freedom' objection, which contends that there are still alternatives left open in Frankfurt's (...) example. Compatibilists have argued that any such alternatives are outside the agent’s voluntary control and hence irrelevant. But the arguments for this conclusion commit the compatibilist to the more general claim that volitions are not within agents' voluntary control, and incompatibilism is generally motivated by a rejection this claim - so if we could support this claim, we would refute incompatibilism without appealing to Frankfurt’s argument. This disagreement about whether volitions are within agents' voluntary control has not received much attention in recent years, despite figuring implicitly in the debate. But in previous centuries, this figured explicitly as the main focus. I consider the historical debate, started by the famous dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall, and continuing throughout the eighteenth century. Although the libertarian position better captures our ordinary conception of freedom, compatibilists argue that it introduces freedom-undermining irrationality, and randomness of the sort that is either unhelpful or incoherent. Whilst for many cases of decision-making, these challenges are justified, they are not justified in cases involving a particular kind of reasons conflict. I argue that decisions are free in cases of this sort, but we cannot have incompatibilist freedom more generally. However, I also argue that these are the most important cases, given the nature of our concerns about freedom. By restricting the domain of incompatibilist freedom to just these cases, we can avoid introducing irrationality, or randomness of the sort that has made incompatibilism seem incoherent, whilst preserving the incompatibilist's intuition that an important sense of freedom rests on alternative possibilities. (shrink)

This paper examines Dworkin's rejection of external scepticism about ethics and his rejection of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility. I argue that his rejection of external scepticism is defensible, but that he errs in treating the challenge posed by incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility as a parallel form of external scepticism. Incompatibilism only appears to be an external challenge if we make certain assumptions about the motivations for incompatibilism, and about the relation between moral responsibility and other values. I argue (...) that we ought to reject these assumptions, and can do so consistent with embracing Dworkin's broader philosophical project. (shrink)

This chapter aims to provide an outline of the archaeological remains reflecting the Ottoman presence on the Middle Nile, with preliminary interpretation and suggestions for areas in which future research could most profitably concentrate. The Nubian frontier region of the Ottoman Empire is one of its least-known areas. It raises numerous questions relating to both Sudanese and Ottoman history, as well as the nature of relations between the Ottomans and the Funj, in which the Ottoman garrisons on the Middle Nile (...) must have played an intermediary role. While Sai is traditionally thought of as marking the southernmost extremity of Ottoman rule, the evidence of some of the sites above suggests that Ottoman rule extended further south, towards Hannek. (shrink)

Is it morally justifiable to force non-consenting pregnant women to submit to caesarean surgery to save their fetus in distress? Even though proponents and opponents largely agree on the interests at stake, such as the health and life of the fetus and the respect for bodily integrity and autonomy of pregnant women, they disagree on which moral weight to attach to these interests. This is why disagreements about the justifiability of forced caesareans tend to be pervasive and intractable. To sidestep (...) this deadlock, we will focus on conditions that give rise to the ‘caesarean dilemma’ in the first place, namely the conflict between inherent norms and values medical professionals are committed to by virtue of being a medical professional. Using the reflective equilibrium, we will test the opponents’ and proponents’ considered judgments about forced caesareans against the norms and values they—as medical professionals—are committed to and determine whether they are coherent. Subsequently we will identify the proponents’ incoherencies between the considered judgments and norms and values they are committed to and conclude that as long as these incoherencies are in place, forced caesareans are morally impermissible. (shrink)

There is an increasing interest in the possibility of using nudges to promote people's health. Following the advances in developmental biology and epigenetics, it is clear that one's health is not always the result of one's own choices. In the period surrounding pregnancy, maternal choice behaviour has a significant influence on perinatal morbidity and mortality as well as the development of chronic diseases later in life. One's health is thus a matter of one's own as well as one's maternal choices. (...) Therefore, self-regarding and other-regarding nudges should be considered as viable strategies to promote health. In this article, we introduce the concept of other-regarding nudges. We use the harm principle and the principle of beneficence to justify these other-regarding nudges. We conclude by stressing the importance of a fair assessment of expectations towards the nudgee, when determining whether a nudge is aimed at preventing harm or promoting a good. (shrink)

Poor pregnancy outcomes and inequalities in these outcomes remain a major challenge, even in prosperous societies that have high-quality health care and public health policy in place. In this article, we propose that justice demands the improvement of what we call the ‘health agency’ of parents-to-be as part of a response to these poor outcomes. We take health agency to have three aspects: the capacity to form health-goals one has reason to value, the control one perceives to have over achieving (...) those health-goals and the freedom one has to achieve those health-goals. We will moreover argue that this demand of justice can be best based on a perfectionist rather than neutralist method of justification. Subsequently, we will argue that perfectionist policy may be paternalistic but not wrongfully paternalistic. This leads us to conclude that perfectionism should be adopted to inform and justify public health policy that is aimed at improving health agency in general and counteracting poor pregnancy outcomes and inequalities in perinatal health outcomes in particular. (shrink)

Formulating sound and acceptable embryo research policy remains challenging especially in a pluralistic world. This challenge has acquired a new dimension of complexity with the advent of so-called embryo models, which are derived from stem cells. In this article, we present a normative strategy to facilitate the process of sound policy-making in the field of human embryology. This strategy involves seeking neutral agreements on higher level theories and doctrines as well as seeking agreements on the level of concrete policy proposals. (...) We call this strategy: going high and low. By going high and low, the plurality of reasonable moral and epistemic convictions of stakeholders involved in the domain of human embryology is respected while the process of policy-making in this area is improved. (shrink)

I would like to thank all who have taken the time to read and comment on my target article in which I compare state neutrality and perfectionism as approaches to justify public health policy and ar...

Modelling data in applied areas particularly in reliability engineering is a prominent research topic. Statistical models play a vital role in modelling reliability data and are useful for further decision-making policies. In this paper, we study a new class of distributions with one additional shape parameter, called a new generalized exponential-X family. Some of its properties are taken into account. The maximum likelihood approach is adopted to obtain the estimates of the model parameters. For assessing the performance of these estimators, (...) a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out. The usefulness of the proposed family is demonstrated by means of a real-life application representing the failure times of electronic components. The fitted results show that the new generalized exponential-X family provides a close fit to data. Finally, considering the failure times data, the Bayesian analysis and performance of Gibbs sampling are discussed. The diagnostics measures such as the Raftery–Lewis, Geweke, and Gelman–Rubin are applied to check the convergence of the algorithm. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page W12-W14.

Statistical distributions play a prominent role for modeling data in applied fields, particularly in actuarial, financial sciences, and risk management fields. Among the statistical distributions, the heavy-tailed distributions have proven the best choice to use for modeling heavy-tailed financial data. The actuaries are often in search of such types of distributions to provide the best description of the actuarial and financial data. This study presents a new power transformation to introduce a new family of heavy-tailed distributions useful for modeling heavy-tailed (...) financial data. A submodel, namely, heavy-tailed beta-power transformed Weibull model is considered to demonstrate the adequacy of the proposed method. Some actuarial measures such as value at risk, tail value at risk, tail variance, and tail variance premium are calculated. A brief simulation study based on these measures is provided. Finally, an application to the insurance loss dataset is analyzed, which revealed that the proposed distribution is a superior model among the competitors and could potentially be very adequate in describing and modeling actuarial and financial data. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical validity of using viability as the cutoff point for abortion in the Netherlands, in view of potential changes to the Dutch perinatal care guideline. According to the Dutch Penal Code, abortion is permitted until viability: the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb with technological assistance. Since the law was enacted in 1984, viability has been set at 24 weeks gestational age. Currently, in the Netherlands, the treatment limit for extreme prematurity is (...) also set at 24 weeks. The potential revision of the guideline could lower this threshold. Such a change could have implications for abortion in the Netherlands. We critically evaluate the use of viability within the Dutch context and offer recommendations for modifying the legal framework concerning abortion. We conclude that relying on any interpretation of viability is morally problematic for abortion regulation, as it is too indeterminate a concept to establish a threshold in a morally relevant way. (shrink)

The problem of finding optimal sampling schemes has been resolved in two models. The novelty of this study lies in its cost efficiency, specifically, for the applied problems with expensive sampling process. In discussed models, we show that some observations counteract other ones in prediction mechanism. The autocovariance function of underlying process causes mentioned result. Our interesting result is that, although removing neutralizing observations convert sampling scheme to nonredundant case, it causes to worse prediction. A simulation study confirms this matter, (...) too. (shrink)

This paper introduces the new novel four-parameter Weibull distribution named as the Marshall–Olkin alpha power Weibull distribution. Some statistical properties of the distribution are examined. Based on Type-I censored and Type-II censored samples, maximum likelihood estimation, maximum product spacing, and Bayesian estimation for the MOAPW distribution parameters are discussed. Numerical analysis using real data sets and Monte Carlo simulation are accomplished to compare various estimation methods. This novel model’s supremacy upon some famous distributions is explained using two real data sets (...) and it is shown that the MOAPW model can achieve better fits than other competitive distributions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the estimation of the Weibull generalized exponential distribution parameters based on the adaptive Type-II progressive censored sample. Maximum likelihood estimation, maximum product spacing, and Bayesian estimation based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have been determined to find the best estimation method. The Monte Carlo simulation is used to compare the three methods of estimation based on the ATIIP-censored sample, and also, we made a bootstrap confidence interval estimation. We will analyze data related to the (...) distribution about single carbon fiber and electrical data as real data cases to show how the schemes work in practice. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to develop an understanding of how nursing students gained perspective on nursing care of diverse populations through watching documentaries in a cultural diversity course. The basis of this paper is our analyses of students’ written responses and reactions to documentaries viewed in class. The guiding theoretical frameworks for the course content and the study included postcolonial feminism, Foucauldian thought, and cultural safety. Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain was used to identify themes and determine (...) how undergraduate nursing students were progressing in achieving learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that while the use of documentaries serves as a tool for deepening students’ understanding of the realities of various populations, this activity, in the absence of critical reflection, may inadvertently promote stereotypes and further marginalize different people groups. Even though nursing students reflected on the importance of cultural safety in nursing, our findings indicate that their actions may not reflect this, especially since these students are in the early stages of the nursing program. Students need to be provided with a space where they can explore implicit biases evoked by exposure to new information about different people groups as a way of enhancing culturally safe care. (shrink)

Hegel's reading of Hafez as part of his Berlin aesthetics lectures. The jargon of the prosaic world -/- This essay deals with Hegel's reading (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831) of Hafez' poetry (Moḥammad Schams ad-Din Hafez Schirazi, around 1315 - 1390) during his lectures on the Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art at the University of Berlin (1820/21; 1823; 1826; 1828/29). Hegel's writings, Lectures on Aesthetics, were published from his remains by Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802 - (...) 1873) in three volumes (1835 - 1838) and in a second edition from 1842 onwards. The posthumously published writings of Hegel are, considering the preserved archive material and the unreliable editing work by Hotho, a thoroughly complex research topic. Therefore, this problem area also forms the starting point of the present analysis of Hegel's reading of Hafez. -/- Within the framework of this essay, Hegel's categories of historical frameworks (Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art), especially that of the "Symbolic Art", are examined in his lectures on Aesthetics . This will do in three steps: starting with the current state of research, problematizing of Hegelian concepts in his Lectures on Aesthetics like "oriental Pantheism" or Vorkunst, ("the threshold of art" or "praeambula": T. M. Knox' translation, 1975, part I); extending the discussion by focusing on similarities and differences between Hegel's reading of Goethe (part II) and Hegel's reading of Hafez (part III) in his Berlin Aesthetics Lectures of the 1820's. For this purpose, material from Goethe's literary remains (II), as well as a masterpiece of Dutch painters van Eyck analyzed by Hegel (Ghent Altarpiece) during his lectures (III), will be included in the analysis and explored from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. In doing so, Goethe's “Space of Experience and Horizon of Expectation” (Koselleck) in imitating Arabic script and calligraphy (II) is linked to Hegel's reading of Hafez during his Berlin lectures on aesthetics (III). Thus, a dialogue of cultures unfolds between poetry and philosophy. The main questions are: How does the German philosopher Hegel interpret and receive Hafiz's poetry in the context of German idealist philosophy as a topic of his lectures on aesthetics? What epistemological aspects can be gained from Hegel's reading of Hafez for a cultural studies analysis, especially regarding the history of the ideas? In addition to analyzing the historical aspects, the aim is also to uncover new perspectives in order to look with Hafez and Rumi at Hegel's problem child of ‘history’. Of particular interest are epistemological aspects and problems of reception and translation studies in sense of interdisciplinary and intercultural research (e. g. connected/entangled histories; boundary objects). Interculturality is understood in the context of the present essay as a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework in the sense of entangled histories research work interwoven with communication, aesthetic and cultural techniques approaches or resilience studies in a historical perspective. (shrink)

Publication date: 11 June 2018 Source: Author: Roohollah Roozbeh Pride is discredited in all cultures, but pride in poetic talent is praiseworthy in all areas. In poetry, the geniuses of all eras have enjoyed their poetry and have paid attention to and have taken great pride in their own poetry. Hafiz boasts of his poetry and is so sure of his poetry that he knows that so long as people reside on earth, the world will read and receive his poetry. (...) The same parallel is found in Shakespeare's poetry so much so that Shakespeare is sure that his poem will be read so long as people can breathe and see. This belief in the immortality of poetry and its effects in the two poets are followed in this article. The dimensions of this issue and the reasons for the discourse of poetry and sonnet are explained in detail. The conclusion is that the two poets are proud of beautiful form and musicality of their poetry which will spread through the world. This is endorsed through the untranslatability of the poems of the two poets ’poetry. The methodology of this paper is based on the descriptive-analytical approach of the American comparative Literature School. The focus of this study is to compare pride in the poetry of Hafez and Shakespeare. (shrink)

Hafez Ismaili M’hamdi argues in the article “Neutrality and Perfectionism in Public Health” that the state can legitimately implement public health policies that protect capabilities, even if these...

La poésie lyrique de Hâfez s'élève au niveau de la plus exigeante méditation philosophique. L'amour, qui est son foyer, n'y désigne pas une affection ou une passion de l'âme. Il fait écho à la théologie de l'amour qui s'est construite en islam au croisement du néoplatonisme avicennisant et du soufisme d'Ibn 'Arabî. Pour Hâfez, l'amour est ce qui de Dieu apparaît dans l'homme. Ses affres sont le mystère de la théophanie. Le ghazal est une fenêtre sur l'ontologie de la théophanie (...) et sur l'amphibolie du réel qu'elle induit. Il opère, dans la matière des figures qu'il sollicite, la coalescence des ordres de la réalité et des formes de la perception. Il révèle les ressources du sensible quand il devient cette réalité subtile lestée d'une matière transmuée. La poésie de Hâfez dévoile les paradoxes du réel, immanent et transcendant, sensible et intelligible, pour nous mettre sur la voie du paradoxe fondamental : le paradoxe de Dieu, qui est caché et apparent, et le paradoxe de la révélation, qui confère des noms et des attributs à une essence insondable. Ce faisant, elle côtoie les discours de la religion et de la philosophie. Le poète, en dévoilant le sens vrai de la révélation, devient le rival du religieux. Il trouve son site en un lieu défriché et balisé par le philosophe. Hâfez exprime dans l'unité et l'équilibre parfait du poème d'amour la théologie et l'ontologie que le philosophe formule dans des concepts abstraits. Il parachève le projet que la philosophie réalise partiellement et maladroitement. The lyrical poetry of Hâfez is in the upright position of the most accurate philosophical meditation. Its focus, which is love, is neither affection nor a passion of the soul. Love, in this place, is the matter of the theological theory of love born in Islam at the crossing of the Neo-Platonism of Avicenna and the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabî. According to Hâfez, Love proceeds from God and is made manifest in man. To endure the suffering of love is the secret of God's self-revelation. The ghazal uncloses the ontology of God's self-revelation and the ambiguous signification of the reality signified by it. By the modes of the poetical expression, divine realities and forms of perception are coalescing, and what the sensible supplies gets clearly visible. Hâfez's poetry unveils the paradox of divine reality, being both immanence and transcendence, intelligible and sensible. By this way, we are led to the essential paradox: the paradox of God, who is both hidden and evident, that is the paradox of revelation: the Essence is unknown, and yet it admits names and attributes. Thus, poetry joins with religion and philosophy. The poet unveils the true signification of revelation and thereby competes with the devout. He dwells in a place closely examined by the philosopher. Hâfez makes known the theological and ontological matters of abstract concepts of philosophy in the unity and perfect equilibrium of the poem. The poet brings to the end the philosopher's purpose, which the philosopher is unable to accomplish. (shrink)